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BBS Documentary Now Shipping
Prophetic_Truth writes "Jason Scott is now shipping his BBS Documentary, which consists of five and a half hours of episodes outlining the history of Bulletin Board Systems. On a personal note, I can't wait to get my preordered copy! I've been looking forward to this documentary more so than HHGTG and Star Wars ROTS."
OMG, shoot me. It was the internet for us poor kids that didn't go to college (or weren't old enough) to get on the real internet.
BBS is an acronym for Bulletin Board System. It was a server with modems that people would dial into. It ran special software that served up files, forums, and even email gateways to real internet in some cases.
Since you had to call into them and pay toll charges (to access the really good BBS'es that were Long Distance [or LD if you're nasty]), Beige Boxes, Blue Boxes, and Red Boxes were popular.
Besides, when you jacked into your neighbors phone line, you didn't have to worry about your parents getting pissed 'In case someone has to call the house in an emergency'.
Fun times, yessiree! Ah, the memories (and 8-bit mammaries).
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
But not the last. The Telnet BBS Guide lists about 100 active dial-up, and 400 Telnet BBS services.
It'd be fun to watch for the nostalgia value. Hordes of 80's greasy, long haired geeks with huge glasses (myself included :)) freaking out about how much faster 1200 baud is over the old 110/300.
That's a tired and inaccurate stereotype. And there were no 1200 baud modems, just 300 baud modems that many users incorrectly identified as such because they thought bit rate and baud rate synonymous. But I've been interrupted while posting this so there are likely twenty posts pointing that out already, eh? ;-)
The only thing I really miss about the BBS days is hobbyist network messaging. FidoNet netmail and echomail had a far better signal to noise ratio -and probably still do- than anything I've yet seen on the 'net.
Making the world a better place, one psychotic episode at a time.
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